Review: English Beat @ Bimbos

Okay, so this is my first concert review for The ColorAwesome… scary! Haven’t written a review of anything since college (a mere 20 some years ago) but here goes…

Paige picked me up at my parents’ in Belmont and we made our way up to “the city” for The English Beat at Bimbos. Thank goodness she knows the city like the back of her hand ’cause I’m no help when it comes to driving. I’ve lived in SoCal for over 15 years now. The highlite of our mini-roadtrip was the playlost of 80’s music Paige made especially for moi 🙂

Paige has excellent parking karma. We quickly found a sweet parking space and a little Japanese/Sushi restaurant, both within a few blocks of Bimbos. The food was excellent (& so was the Saki ;-). After our delish dinner and saki, we managed our way down the street to Bimbo’s with a quick stop at their well-stocked bar for an After Five and then and thru the dancing crowd to the front of the stage. The opening band “The Impalers” were already playing and unfortunately they were on their next to last song 🙁 But, from what we heard, they were great. I have to mention that the singer was very pregnant, but youwould have never known it the way she she bopped around while singing and dancing. Wish we could’ve seen more of their set, but ces’t la vie.

Of course there’s always that lull between the opening band and the headliner. When you’re front row, there’s no “save my spot” we were hunkered down for a while. In my boredom I started scrutinizing the stage. “Hey Paige! Take a pic of the guitars lined up.” Check, she’s already done that. Then I say “Paige, take a pic of the sax!” Check, she’s already done that. It’s then in my Saki & AfterFive stupor I realize I’m trying to tell an excellent photographer what she should take pix of… so I shut my mouth 🙂

Because I was so paranoid about having to write some sort of review for the show, I took out a pen and notepad and started taking notes once the English Beat came out on stage. Well, that notebook and my cheap bright orange earplugs jammed in my ears caught Dave Wakeling’s attention, and not in the way I was hoping. He’s a chatty and funny performer, and many a barb were thrown at ‘the blondie w/ the huge earplugs in’. What he didn’t understand is that I really took my assignment seriously for writing a review and that all those concerts standing right next to the pounding speakers back in the 80’s & 90’s have pretty much depleted my hearing (in both ears, but mainly my left). I had been doing plenty of skanking, so at this point I was ready for another drink. Dave had teased me in front of the whole audience and there was no way in hell I was gonna’ remove my earplugs, so with dorky orange earplugs in I put away my pen-n-paper and I hightailed my butt to the Ladies Room & then to the bar to get another cocktail.

By that time the band had treated us to “Tears of a Clown”, “Hands Off”, “Rough Rider”, and their great cover of “I’ll Take You There” by the Staple Singers. At this point I decided I wanted to down another cocktail, so made my way to bar. Ran into my old friends at the bar and while we caught up on the good old days I could hear in the backgroung “I Confess” & “Save It For Later”. After that, my mind is a bit of a blur. Fast forward to the end of the night and a tearful goodbye (I have issues) we bid adieu & made plans for my next trek north for OMD in March. I hope you enjoyed or at least were amused by my commentary re the English Beat show. I was fortunate enough to see General Public back in the day, but I have to admit I never was able to catch The English Beat live until now. But seeing them after all these year I know they’ve never missed a BEAT. =^..^=

Photos: The English Beat at Bimbos
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